In the manufacture of tissue products such as facial tissue, bath tissue, paper towels, dinner napkins and the like, it is well known that strength and softness are inversely related. For a given tissue base sheet, increasing the softness of the sheet will generally decrease the tensile strength, particularly when the softness is increased through mechanical or chemical debonding. Creping is a good example of mechanical debonding which substantially weakens the sheet. The addition of debonders to the tissue making furnish is a common example of a chemical means for softening the sheet, but which also results in a weaker sheet. In either case the strength of the tissue sheet must be initially made stronger to counteract the strength degradation of the softening effect. This translates into higher costs for chemical strengthening agents or additional fibers.
Hence there is a need for a means for providing soft tissue sheets which has a less pronounced negative effect on the strength of the resulting sheet.